Shared-media communication networks, such as wireless networks or power-line communication (PLC) networks (a type of communication over power-lines), provide an enabling technology for networking communication. Shared-media, however, is generally a physical medium that is strongly affected by environmental conditions that change over time. Some examples include temporal changes in interference (e.g., other wireless networks or electric appliances), physical obstruction (e.g., doors opening and/or closing or seasonal changes in foliage density of trees), and propagation characteristics of the physical media (e.g., temperature or humidity changes). The time scales of such temporal changes can range between milliseconds (e.g., transmissions from other wireless networks) to months (e.g., seasonal changes of outdoor environment).
To address these challenges, routing protocols operating in shared-media environments typically select multiple routes to form robust paths towards a destination. By having each node maintain multiple routes, a device may quickly retransmit packets using different links in case transmission failures occur. Existing routing protocols currently generally select routes that minimize a specified cost (e.g., hop count or Estimated Transmission Count (ETX), etc.).